Artificial skin with 3 senses: touch (force), temperature, and humidity. Works by combining a thin film material that changes shape in response to force, temperature, or humidity with a piezoelectric material that senses the change in shape and turns it into an electric current.

There's 2,000 sensors per square millimeter, with a hydrogel which changes shape in response to force and temperature, and because of its ability to absorb water, it changes shape with humidity as well, surrounded by a shell of piezoelectric zinc oxide.

This is created using a process called chemical vapor deposition (CVD). She (Anna Maria Coclite) is a CVD expert, but she doesn't talk about the details much in this talk. CVD is used primarily in the semiconductor industry. The main idea is to vaporize a chemical to deposit a thin -- 1-atom thick, or 1-molecule thick -- layer on a solid surface. A vacuum is created to vaporize the chemical. And chemicals are chosen so there is a chemical reaction on the surface. Without this chemical reaction, the process is called "physical vapor deposition" instead of "chemical vapor deposition".

She jump straight to talking about applications of the technology. My first thought was this could be used for robots, and she mentioned that, but what she thought would be the primary applications were medical applications, such as artificial skin for burn victims, and sense of touch for people with prosthetics.

Creating artificial skin | Anna Maria Coclite | TEDxVienna

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